


Time Does Reveal

by starstriker



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Entomology, Family Reunions, First Contact, Gen, Past Character Death, Post-Canon, Post-Dream No More Ending (Hollow Knight), Sibling Bonding, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, as written by someone who knows jack about entomology, finally adding the rest of those sibling tags!!, guest starring: everyone's post game issues, listen hollow MUST live okay, more characters may come later?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26608246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstriker/pseuds/starstriker
Summary: Hornet copes with the loss of one of her siblings, running a kingdom, odd tremors from the world above, and bonding with the only family member she has left.Meanwhile, two human scientists have no clue what they just stumbled upon in Willamette National Park.These two things are very much related.
Relationships: Hornet & The Knight (Hollow Knight), Original Character & Original Character, The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel & Hornet, The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel & The Knight
Comments: 112
Kudos: 228





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone, thanks for clicking on this! I'll warn you know that the first chapter is pretty OC centric, although I want to write more of the Hollow Knight characters. I'm not quite comfortable with Hornet's voice yet, so consider her interlude here as a test run. Also, this work features entomologists doing entomologist stuff...and I am not an entomologist. I've done my best, lol. Have fun reading!

Dr. Henry Schmidt had not always been one of the world’s leading minds in the field of entomology. He had, at various points, been an overtired grad student, a college student flirting with different majors and stumbling through his education, and a listless high school kid who still wanted to play outside despite that long being socially unacceptable. But most pronounced in his mind was his childhood, which he spent trudging through the too-tall grass in the field beyond his backyard, picking up beetles with an uncanny delicacy that most small children did not possess towards other living beings.

It was a trait that had stayed with him well into adulthood, and it was a lucky one to have in his field. Henry didn’t think he’d ever met anyone who loved bugs quite as much as he did. Been just as fascinated? Oh sure, there were plenty of those folks in his field, ones who saw the critters that scuttled and flew more precisely than any bird as beautifully alien. But he truly loved them–and finding a new species? That was like first contact with an alien civilization.

(Henry had never thought that would be literal.)

It started like this: it was a Saturday morning, and Henry didn’t have any long term projects at the moment. In fact, he’d planned on spending his morning (afternoon now–he’d slept in) watching Youtube videos in his pajamas. But, on a whim, he’d checked his email instead and found himself immediately glad that he had.

**Farzenah Ghorbani [8:08 AM] Something from the Oregon Trip**

_Hi Henry,_

__

__

_Sorry to bother you on a weekend, but I’ve been up by you recently in Willamette. I don’t know what you’ve been up to, but if you’ve got the time to stop by we’ve been finding some interesting things down here. Looks like a couple new species, but I’d love having another set of good eyes down here with me. The post-grads are sweet but they don’t know their_ Chrysomelidae _from their_ Cerambycidae _. Make the drive–it’ll be worth your while._

_Best, Dr. Farzenah Ghorbani_

He already started packing mentally when he saw the name. Dr. Ghorbani–Farzenah to her peers that were on her good side–was another world-renowned entomologist with a love for mantids. If there were beetles down there, he wasn’t surprised she’d reached out to him. They’d been on good terms and had entered the field around the same time, even collaborating several times. It’d been, what, two years since they’d last co-authored a paper? Too damn long, he decided. 

“Siri, directions to Willamette National Forest,” he enunciated, walking back to his room to change out of his sweatpants. It’d be a long drive, but with a worthy reward at the end. He was somehow certain this was going to be something big.

* * *

There’d been tremors all throughout Hallownest and Deepnest for the last few days. Nothing out of the ordinary, per say, but enough that Hornet was starting to wonder if it might be the first signs of some larger event. With great hesitancy, she’d allowed Hollow to check on the Abyss, making sure it wasn’t...anything that might be down there. They weren’t the best scout, considering their lack of a voice, but they had become able to communicate enough to relay basic information like our siblings aren’t somehow going to destroy both kingdoms.

That had been a relief. Neither of them knew what had happened to the little ghost, but they both suspected (rather, Hornet suspected and thought that Hollow might suspect as well) that they were in that place, somewhere. Not as a shade but–something else.

Hornet was surprised by how much she missed them. 

At least she still had Hollow, their mangled form dragged from the Black Egg Temple once she realized the little one wasn’t going to come back–that all she had was a cracked mask and their once precious belongings. At first, she’d thought that she was dragging out a corpse for a burial, one of many that would be finally put to rest. But a few startling spasms after they’d left had revealed that no, Hornet still had one sibling left, and she’d do about anything to keep it that way.

It was strange. Before the arrival of the little ghost she’d never paid much heed to the vessels. But their capacity for personhood had made her...regret, some of her previous actions. It had also made her see Hollow as a person, who had been locked up with only the Radiance for company for years and years.

That was someone deserving of her help. They failed in their mission, yes, but so had she–what a protector she was, truly, she thought upon seeing the fragments of the little one’s mask. If she saved them, then at least–

–At least there would be someone. 

Hollow was better company than most, besides. They were quiet, in a sometimes eerie manner but mostly in a way that Hornet thought was comfortable. For so long, she’d talked rarely to the various inhabitants of the two kingdoms, and with the exception of the chatter of the Midwife she found most conversation to be disconcerting at best (some Queen she would make with that around, she thought again). She didn’t really know what they were thinking–assuming they were, because she was only mostly certain they were experiencing emotions in the same way the little ghost clearly had–but they didn’t seem unhappy or in pain. It was more than most people could say. It was more than she could say, frequently.

Right–the tremors. 

Hornet stared up at the ceiling with deep suspicion coating her features. She’s only been the Openearth a handful of times, getting to and from Pharloom. Would she have to venture once again to the place, where rain fell not from a lake but from the sky? 

(The little ghost would have loved it.)

* * *  
Henry made the four hour drive in three, parking his old pickup-truck on the side of the dirt road. It was a bit of a walk to the site that Farzenah had given him only vague directions to, but he knew the general area well enough to navigate his way down the roughly marked out trails in the thick woodland. 

As soon as he had arrived, he was greeted with the sight of his colleague and her familiar brisk walking pace. Farzenah didn’t run anywhere, not that he’d seen at least, but it never seemed to impact her speed. 

“Schmidt,” she greeted, and he wasn’t sure why when she addressed him as ‘Henry’ in emails. “Good to have you here. Come take a look.”

And that was that. Farzenah was to the point as always. But (at least to someone who had met her before) she was clearly excited about something, getting a little glimmer in her eyes that wasn’t normally there. Not surprising, considering the casual urgency in her email.

She took him to a little outside station, where several carapaces were laid out on a tarp, delicately placed there by Farzenah’s own careful hand. The smallest seemed to be about the half the length of Henry’s thumb, while the largest was almost as big as his hand–a hulking rhinoceros beetle, from a quick glance. 

With a low whistle, he crouched next to the tarp. Even with beetles being his specialty (and most of these were beetles, like she’d mentioned), he couldn’t immediately identify any of them.

Then he noticed something odd. “Farzenah, most of them don’t have–”

“–Six legs,” she finished. “I noticed too. Odd, isn’t it? Wanted to call you down just because of that. Could be big, if it’s real.”

“What are these little guys?” he murmured, looking even more closely. Most of them had the same gray and white shells–some of them had splotches of what might be some sort of infection, mostly around the head. Seeing how the disease must have ravaged them (so many little corpses Farzenah had found) was oddly depressing for Henry.

“Could it be a result of that–orange fungus? Is it fungus, I can’t tell.”

“We’re looking into that too,” she said. “I noticed it early on, but again, no luck identifying it.”

Looking over to her briefly to non-verbally ask for permission, he gently picked up one of the little beetles to examine its thorax. There were no signs that there had ever been a third set of legs, no tiny stumps on its side nor even a hole there. Henry frowned at the lack of any conclusions from that, then went on to looking at the other legs.

This only resulted in more questions–the top set of legs were a bit shorter than the hind legs, and the claws were three-pronged. Carefully maneuvering it in the palm of his hand, he squinted at the joints.

Something was off. It took him a moment to realize what it was.

“They’re bipedal? Farzenah–what are these things?”

“Bipedal?” she immediately asked. “Henry. Give it over.”

He did so quickly, watching Farzenah’s scrutiny with an odd nervousness about him. Finally, after looking at both hind legs herself, she responded. “You’re not wrong,” Farzenah murmured. “Check the rhinoceros beetle...looking thing.”

It seems her precision had finally failed her. Still, after looking it over (same orange splotches across its eye area) he sighed in relief. “This one’s got six legs and is walking on all of them, thank god. I don’t think I could have taken any more surprises. We’ve got to find some live specimens to look at how they actually move.”

“Much agreed,” she said as she set the beetle she’d been examining back on the tarp. “I can take you over to the area we found most of these ones, it’s...strange...in and of itself.” 

Despite the absolute wringer he’d just been put through, Henry found his heart rate picking up. Farzenah was right–this was huge if it ended up being real. Were they even insects? Save the number of legs, they seemed to fulfill all the other general requirements. He didn’t know what else they could be, if he was being honest–some sort of mimic species? 

After a bit of a walk (both of them started carefully looking down at the ground, making sure that they didn’t see any little critters darting underfoot. This was too precious to be crushed) they came to a small rocky area. Near the base of one of the rocks was a rather shocking sight–a mound of carapaces, seeming piled up against the boulder. Nearly all of them were intact–and all the ones he could see were the ones affected by the orange blight.

“Poor little guys,” he murmured, crouching down again. “Strange too. Did you just take them from this pile?”

Farzenah walked over to him, looming above him and casting a shadow of the heap of bug corpses. “Some of them. Some of the uninfected ones we found just generally around the area–I’d love to get into the ground and see what’s under there, but I also don’t want to disrupt the live ones. We’ve been careful not to step past this area, by the way–don’t want to collapse their tunnels or anything.”

Rising again, he briefly scanned the area for any holes that connected to above ground. “Makes sense,” he agreed. “What’s our plan then, to get a better look.”

“Our plan, now?” she said, a little smirk on her face. “I knew you’d be sold on this.” Farzenah then pointed to a rather deep hole in one of the rocks, about the size of Henry’s fist. “Take a look down there.”

Stepping over with cautious feet, he leaned over to look down into the chasm. At first, it appeared rather ordinary, with only a few plants lining the bottom. Then, something caught his eye–a little tunnel that appeared about twice the height of those beetles in the rocky side of the chasm that seemed to move further into the rock. All around it were distinctive markings, like something had broken into the rock and left tiny bits of debris around the opening.

“That’s our way in.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry and Farzenah find a strange statuette and their first (and oddest) living specimen. Meanwhile, Hornet heads for the Howling Cliffs with the strangest of her siblings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, welcome back! I didn't expect to be publishing this so quick, but I got excited about this fic and wanted to share, lol. A little less scientists and a little more Hornet – should be reversed next time, but Hornet had things to talk about and who was I to stop her. Also this is not edited like. At all. So if you notice some basic grammar mistake I am sorry about that lol

Looking into the tunnel was easier said than done, Henry noted. Farzenah had brought along some microdrones small enough to fit inside, but how far they could go in would be another issue. “We’ll probably just have to straight up excavate,” she eventually admitted. “But I’ve looked over the area as closely as possible and it doesn’t seem like we’ll be doing any significant damage to the tunnel systems here.”

Henry climbed over some of the rocks to take a look for himself, but his attention was quickly caught by something else. Squinting at it, he motioned over Farzenah to point it out to her. “Did you notice that before?”

It was a little statue, depicted some sort of winged figure with a crown, perched upon one of the miniature bluffs. For something so small, it seemed incredibly detailed, and had clearly suffered from the weather. “No, I hadn’t,” said Farzenah. “That’s odd. Is it built into the rock?”

Gently, he nudged it with his finger and watched as it didn’t budge at all. “Looks like. Some niche artist has apparently been through here. Wonder if they did anything else?”

“Is that legal?” she mused. “This is public property, I don’t think you can just carve away at the rocks.”

He shrugged. “It isn’t like they’re exactly around for us to tell them off,” he pointed out, still admiring the tiny statue. Illegal or not, it was rather cute, if in a bit of a creepy way. The chipped-off face made it seem more ominous than probably intended. Some sort of moth? Clearly, whoever had carved this hadn’t had a good grasp on insect anatomy though. “Probably not important, just thought it looked cool.”

“It is well made, if it’s lasted as long as that weather damage makes it look.” Farzenah grudgingly admitted. 

“Right, right – anyways, bugs?”

“Bugs,” she agreed, leading him back to the tunnel again. 

It proved fairly easy to uncover more of the system, and over the course of several hours they had both a good deal of photographs from the microdrone and more of the tunnel uncovered. Unlike their mystery carver, Farzenah had a permit to do such things. For most of the time, this was rather unexciting, but as day changed to twilight and Henry’s eyes began to droop something once again caught his eye.

“Farzenah, quick,” he whispered to her, noting that even her tirelessness had begun to fail her as they worked into the evening. “Look, down there.”

A little bipedal creature, different than anything they’d ever seen–including those carapaces they’d found before. Staring up (it must be Henry’s overactive imagination, but it really did seem to be looking at them) from the entrance to the tunnel, its white plated face had two symmetrical prongs rising up from its head. Wings covered most of its back, and for a moment both of them sat absolutely still as it looked down and puttered around the hole. 

It moved like a person did, and Henry had already started recording this with his phone, praying that the camera would pick it up in the dim light. His eyes couldn’t quite make out all the details, and he wished this had happened earlier in the day–still, he was so shocked and thrilled than it felt like his heart had stopped beating entirely. 

Finally after jumping (jumping seemed to be its main mode of movement actually, though it could use its little wings to gain some extra height) around in circles for a while, it darted back through the tunnel and into the true darkness beyond. Farzenah and Henry stared after it for several minutes, hoping it would come back out, before finally giving up and turning to each other.

“What was that, Schmidt,” she whispered. “That–was that even an insect? Are we the right people for this job? What was it even doing, anyways?”

“I have no clue,” he told her, quickly glancing back down to make sure their new little friend hadn’t reappeared. “But I know I’m not leaving until we’ve got some answers.

* * *  
When the tremors had not quieted, Hornet had already begun to mentally plan out a journey from Deepnest to at least the Howling Cliffs, getting ever closer to Openearth. With reports of shifting earth from the upper levels of Hallownest however, her mission became all the more important.

In other circumstances, Hornet would have been privately excited for the chance to venture out into the world once more. Moving from the life of a sentinel to the life of a queen had not been easy for her, even with her court in its ravaged state. But life in even a twisted version of Deepnest’s former civilization was far removed from her days where it had been just her and her needle in the dangerous wilds of Hallownest. 

It had not been an easy life, this she knew. Many times she had narrowly saved herself (for who else would?) from certain death, and she hesitated to romanticize that part of her life lest she grow bitter with her success – with the little ghost’s success – in removing many of the more fearsome threats from the world. But it was hard not to miss at least a little bit. With danger came freedom – even the freedom to fail.

When the eyes of an entire kingdom were on you and you knew that you were in charge of leading the way, that freedom was removed.

So maybe she was still excited. And what of it? The only person that seemed to pick up on it was Hollow, oddly enough, for all that she still had great trouble reading them. If there was that much to read. She felt horrible thinking about it, but she still wasn’t sure how much of their former “Pure” title had been true or not. The more she thought, the more she doubted it, but that didn’t change the fact that Hollow wasn’t interested in sharing their emotions with the group.

Had they been the most pure of the bunch, she wondered. All those little fractured masks at the bottom of the Abyss – she had seen them too, and after the little ghost had left she had dared to venture down and feel them under her feet. Had every single one of the little bodies here once held a being that was capable of emotion as much as if not more than the single sibling she’d save was? Not that it mattered persay, Hollow was a person no matter what and with the little ghost’s sacrifice she would never again forget that. But Hornet could never shake the tremendous feeling of loss from the Abyss, and it had followed her ever since.

How much was the truth, how much was the Pale King’s own willful delusions – Hornet could not know.

Hollow had no voice, that much was true. But they could make sounds, little chittering and clicking noises that had at first grated on Hornet’s nerves but now she began to recognize their forms. It wasn’t like the language she used, but it was communication nonetheless, and was sparsely used. Concern seemed to be the main emotion to convey, which had shocked her with its altruism the first time she’d come back from her habitual hunts with a wound and Hollow had dropped their emotionless (facade? mask? Was it real or fake or partially true–) nature to chitter at her. 

When had Hollow become a comfort at all?

They stood now at the entrance to her room, never entering but silently standing watched. Hollow tended to do this with any room she was in, and warded off all but her most trusted advisors quite effectively. She couldn’t see herself ever complaining – she had even less tolerance for meaningly drivel than most rulers and there was so much of it that people wanted to share with her. Walking over to them, she paused briefly at their side so they’d know to follow her and then continued onwards.

“I’m headed towards the Howling Cliffs,” she told them, not sure how much they’d picked up from listening to her talks with concerned citizens – if anything at all. “Would you like to come with me?” She was queen, she should just order them if she wanted them to come. But there was a power in giving them a choice – and Hornet felt odd about ordering around Hollow anyways. They obeyed with an unshakeable obedience that disturbed her more than helped.

They didn’t respond (nor would they ever, she thought) but when she continued out the door they trailed after her like a looming shadow. In the darkness of Deepnest it was hardly noticeable – Hornet was sure that in the upper levels of Hallownest she’d quickly notice the change in light as they walked behind her. 

It was hard to tell whether Hollow enjoyed Deepnest or not, but they didn’t seem to have the instinctually revulsion that many bugs from Hallownest had about her kingdom. The Dirtcarvers popping up out of the ground barely phased them, and while at first their instinct had clearly been to smite them with their nail, after a few times of Hornet skirting around them Hollow had begun to follow suit. No point in further destroying the ecosystem, she thought grimly, and was glad that Hollow had picked up on her actions so quickly. 

She plotted her course in her head quickly, the map of Deepnest, Hallownest, and all their surrounding kingdoms deeply ingrained in her mind. From here to the Queen’s Gardens – did Hollow have any desire to visit their mother, or was she as forsaken to them as their sire must be? – then up to Greenpath, and then finally to the Cliffs. Hornet had no doubt that Hollow had the mobility to keep up with her on some of the routes she would take. They were like a larger version of the nimble little ghost that way (and from what she remembered of her sire’s palace that certainly wasn’t surprising, it must have become a very necessary skill in their life). 

Entering the Queen’s Gardens and thankful she no longer had to dart around traitorous mantises at every corner, she almost didn’t notice Hollow briefly pausing before continuing to trot after her. For a moment, she thought of not mentioning it at all, but she forced herself to speak up. Caring for others did not come naturally to her, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t be putting an effort in.

“Is something wrong?” Was it only a token if she didn’t expect them to answer? She meant it, truly, but knew they had no way to explain. 

But Hollow shook their head carefully, maybe a mimicry of what they’d seen other bugs doing. The sudden onset of communication floored Hornet and shocked her far more than the initial pause had, and if she’d been thinking clearly at the moment she would have maybe been able to recognize what a momentous occasion this was. Hollow had finally been able to say something, if not with words, express their feelings in some way.

As it was, Hornet was far too busy being surprised to question further. And maybe it was good she didn’t push – doing so might have just shut them back down. “Very well,” she said, recovering quickly. “I–let us continue then.” Pausing for a moment in her speech, she tacked on a final statement. “We’ll be out of here shortly.”

She meant it then, somehow feeling that it would not be a good idea to visit the former Queen of Hallownest today, not with her sibling in tow. Her questions regarding Hollow’s thoughts on her (they must have some, right?) again echoed in her mind and she realized with certainty that adding that stresser into either of their lives at this exact moment would probably be an ill-fated endeavor. 

Soon, the Queen’s Gardens were behind them, and with that leg of their journey past she saw out of the corner of her eye the slightest slump in her sibling’s shoulders as their coiled tension came undone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Please do leave a comment if you have a chance to – concrit is still good of course! See you next time :D


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Farzenah finds some lore tablets and phones a friend, while Hornet and Hollow have a road trip together on their way to the surface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back, everyone! We've got a new OC in this chapter who will be more relevant in later chapters – and my favorite sort of dialogue to write, awkward phone calls lol. Have fun!

Over the course of the night and the following day, Henry and Farzenah recovered several more carapaces found with the caverns, and a few more strange objects they’d found underground. None were quite as striking as the little statue had been, looming high over the rest of the site, but certainly they were still strange. The oddest of them all was a piece of stone that seemed to have been polished to a flat sheet, with fine white lines on its surface. This seemed to be no natural marking on the rock, but deliberate and careful strokes.

Farzenah stared at it dispassionately. “I’m starting to think that our stoneworker is playing some sort of long con,” she said, lifting it into the sunlight and examining how the markings glistened. “All I wanted to find was some bugs, and some bored high school student – or something – seems to have left little trinkets for us to find.”

It was less of a definite statement and more of an attempt to convince herself of this. She had no other ideas on what these odd things could be, but the back of her mind prickled as she grasped at the few straws available to her. Scanning over the writing, she thought of the different languages she had seen and tried to compare them to her new finding. Or maybe it was completely off, and they were just random markings.

No, no. There were definitely repeated elements. She knew this because Henry had just come up to her and apologetically handed over three more small tablets, each around the size of the first.

“I have an idea,’ he suggested as she sighed and sat on the ground to look at them in detail. All she’d want was to solve the mystery of the strange insects (or insect-like creatures) that she’d found, not get distracted by tiny maybe-letters.

“Please share,” Farzenah said in a tone of voice that was trying more commanding but even she knew landed somewhere around exasperated – not with Henry, he seemed just as confounded as she was and hence got a pass, but on the situation in general. “The sooner we figure out what this is all about, the sooner we can get back to our bugs.”

“I’m friends with a linguist, we work at the same university. Dr. Caroline Hardt, she’s really bright and likes weird stuff like this. How about we send her some pictures and not worry about it for a bit? That way, we can continue with our research without pause, and still pursue this avenue further.”

Henry knew her well. It was Farzenah’s greatest flaw as well as her greatest boon as a researcher: her boundless curiosity that prevented her from ever moving on from one question to the next. He knew this by now, and was routinely able to draw her out of the worst of it.

“That… yes, that sounds good,” she said slowly, accepting the new plan in her head and carefully picked up the stone fragments. “I don’t think we have cell service out here, but I can get out to civilization for a bit and send them over if you give me her number – who knows, it might do me some good to get out of the woods for a bit.”

After receiving Caroline’s phone number from Henry – who seemed to agree that it might be best if she took at least a short break – Farzenah walked for nearly half the rest of the day, following the trails of Willamette National Park. Civilization – and good reception – were a ways out, but she found that she didn’t mind the time spent at all. In fact, it allowed her to gather her thoughts on the matters at hand, and reflect upon what she did and didn’t know.

What she did know: the creatures that she was studying may or may not be actual insects. However, they were certainly invertebrates, and they could be some sort of mimic species as had been proposed in the past. Secondly, the creature they’d observed didn’t appear to belong to any of the species they’d found thus far, but she knew that it was possible that it was simply in a different stage of life than some of the others. There was also the matter of that odd infection that had left remnants on many of their shells to contend with, but she didn’t think that was going to be very relevant beyond perhaps an explanation of why it was so difficult to actually observe any live ones.

What she didn’t know: who had left that statue and those tablets, and why. Despite her earlier discussion with Henry, it seemed oddly in depth for a single person to do. Not to mention that the statue and the tablets seemed different in both age and style. In the end, she might not have to think about that at all, however. Unless it was related to the bugs somehow – which she greatly doubted – it would be well outside of her jurisdiction. And with her calling Caroline in a bit, maybe she’d be helping out another scientist, and giving her something interesting to do.

Yes, that sounded quite nice. Farzenah breathed in the cool air, revelling in the feeling of being alone with her thoughts. She didn’t completely close out the rest of the world – she wasn’t stupid, and knew that if she got lost or was injured she’d be miles away from help – but even just the act of paying attention to the wider world around her instead of squinting at bugs all day was helping her mood.

She loved her job, but every once in a while… well, even she needed a break.

Finally, she seemed to reach a station that at least gave her WiFi, and resting her legs on a bench she typed in the number that Henry had given her. The phone rang only twice before she heard someone answer.

“Hi, you’ve reached Dr. Caroline Hardt?”

The speaker had a noticeable British accent – Farzenah wasn’t well versed enough to know which accent it was, and had to settle for the generic term – and had a lightness in her tone that didn’t seem falsified. Taking a deep breath in, Farzenah began to speak.

“Hi, Dr. Hardt. This is Farzenah Ghorbani, I’m a friend of Henry’s – Henry Schmidt? We’re out on a sort of expedition together – I roped him into it – and we ran into something that he thought might be interesting to you.”

There was a laugh on the other side of the phone, grainy sounding from how it carried over her speakers. “Oh, hey! He’s mentioned you before, actually – you’ve worked together before, right? No, that – that sounds cool! I’m admittedly curious what an entomologist stumbled upon that has to do with linguistics – if the bugs have started talking, you’ve probably spent too much time out in the woods.”

Farzenah laughed as well, understanding the absurdity of the situation. “No, it isn’t that – trust me, I’d be very worried if that was the case – but we found some sort of written on stone in one of our sites. The tablet’s probably – hmmm, about the size of the center of my palm? I was going to send you some pictures so you could take a look at them.”

“Sure, sounds fun!” she responded, her voice crackling with interference. “Want me to just, like – tell you if they look similar to any language I’ve seen, if they do I can giving translation a whirl.”

“That’d be great. I’ll get those over to you right away.”

“Oh, no worries! This sounds fun – good luck to you and Henry too!”

“Thank you so much,” she said with a smile that she hoped was going to be audible, before hanging up. That had gone very well, in her book. Sending the pictures she had taken of the tablets over to Caroline, Farzenah stood from the bench and stretched luxuriously, looking up at the sky to get a sense of the time before remembering to just check her phone instead.

2:15 to the minute. She had enough hours of daylight to make it back safely. With that, she turned to head back to the site.  


* * *

Despite the circumstances and her grim thoughts, Hornet had enjoyed their brief trip through the gardens. Her relative good mood continued well into Greenpath, and she found herself actually enjoying the familiar routes, even with a shadow trailing after her. In fact it felt… awfully familiar…

Her heart sank a little. Of course, this would be the area where she’d first encountered the other little shadow, now missing to the dark. They’d even pass by the makeshift arena where they did battle – for a moment, she considered returning there briefly, for just a chance to reflect, but then remembered that the crumpled form of another vessel still rested there and thought that in her current company that would best be avoided. 

Finally, they’d made it to the Howling Cliffs, that part of Hallownest that you could reach the world above. On her way up the cliff face, she took a moment to look out over the parts of Hallownest she could see, the little lights of Dirtmouth twinkling in the darkness below her. Far off in the distance was the pink and violet glow of the Crystal Peaks. The crown of Hallownest was partially open to the air, if she remembered correctly – they could have gone that way, but it seemed cruel to take Hollow by the looming statue of their old enemy.

It wasn’t her kingdom. She was not the one who had received the King’s Brand, after all, and Hallownest’s ruler was lost to her. But she had spent so much of her life protecting it, and had gained – not a love, but a certain concern for at least the land itself. Seeing it recover from the Infection was something she had never expected to be able to experience, but in her own way she was grateful for it.

Tearing her eyes away from the kingdom below, she stared towards the light. It was never a sight that had meant anything good within her memory, and it felt unnatural to climb further towards it. The echoes of the Radiance’s power still lingered in places, and it was dangerous to forget.

But there was no choice, if she wanted to ensure her own kingdom’s safety. With a slight squint to help block out the light, she leapt forward to the next jutting rock on the cliff face, continuing on her path upwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! As always, if you have the time I really appreciate comments – if you've already kudosed it's the best way I have to easily know that people are still reading. Also, thank you to everyone who's commented in the past, I've appreciated all of them! See you next time :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caroline Hardt has a nice morning attempting to decipher some strange tablets, and literally everyone else has a very alarming afternoon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back everyone! Final major human OC introduced in this chapter, and we get into some Bug Linguistics. I've based some of what Caroline talks about here off of Hallowscript by Anand_G on reddit (here's the link: https://www.reddit.com/r/HollowKnight/comments/clurqj/version_three_of_the_buglang_reconstruction/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app I hope ao3 lets that work lol). It's very interesting stuff and you should check it out if you have the time! That's everything important, have fun reading!

Caroline was having a rather nice morning. It was shaping up to be a lovely day outside, she had a day off from her work at the university with her students on break for the week, and she’d got some mysterious pictures of tablets to decode. Pretty quickly, she’d known that they weren’t going to be a language she knew, nor necessarily even related to any of them, which made the project all the more exciting.

Hmmmm… no, they definitely didn’t look any clearer to her in the morning. Sitting down at her kitchen table, she’d pulled out her phone and a notebook to start working with her cup of coffee. Sketching out a quick recreation of the text in pen, she began to make notes in pencil all over it, circling and highlighting different aspects as she went. If only she’d had a translation to go off of! But then, she supposed, Henry and Farzenah wouldn’t have needed her help in the first place.

Just for fun, she ended up going through both her own library of journals and everything she had access to through work to see if her strange tablets appeared anywhere. No luck. It was possible that it was the work of a conlanger – had Farzenah mentioned that possibility, she couldn’t remember now – in which case it might be helpful to speculate about which language (or languages) the creator had spoken. She’d leave the inquiry for later, however. Best to just take the text by itself for now.

Cross referencing the texts with each other helped her out a bit. She wasn’t any closer to deciphering a meaning, but she could note that not only were the symbols similar but the way they were linked seemed to have some significance to. A feature of grammar, or of sound? She circled all the similarities she saw.

The language seemed to run from top to bottom, although with it being in a circle there might be some sort of inwards to outwards (or vice versa) component as well. The vertical direction seemed significant though. By this time, her copy of the writing had accumulated dozens of scribbled notes across even its most important features, and she decided to let her poor hand take a break.

She’d woken up at eight, and it was nearly 12:30 by now. As she thought that maybe it would be for the best to get up for a bit, she heard a familiar set of footsteps in the hallway.

“Good morning – oh, what’s that?” Her husband, prone to sleeping in to dramatically late times if given the chance to make up for his night-owl habits, looked over her shoulder at her paper and phone. Zixin Wang was an anthropologist, and they’d met through their jobs. She’d known after the third time that they accidentally stayed up until sunrise talking about their respective fields together that she should ask him out, and it had been one of the best choices she’d made in her life.

“A little side project someone thought I’d be interested in,” she said, leaning over to kiss his cheek. He repaid her by trying to sip her cold coffee, but she stole it away before he could do so successfully. 

“Looks like they were right,” Zixin responded, sitting on the chair next to her. “Can I take a look at what you’ve got so far?”

Caroline handed it over, watching as her husband read through all her chicken-scratch notes with ease. “This is interesting,” he said at last, handing it back over. “Could clusters of symbols represent syllables?”

“That’s what I was thinking at first, but it’s hard to tell what’s trying to represent sound and what’s trying to represent meaning. Does this system even represent both? Who knows!”

She received a sympathetic hum from him. “So, what are you going to tell the person who sent this to you?”

“Probably just the ideas I have so far,” she admitted, flipping through to the next page where she’d etched out the next tablet and handing it over to him again. “I don’t think I can make any sort of translation attempt of course, but I definitely want to find out if they have anything new.”

“Are they someplace local? You might be able to just go down there, see updates in real time,” suggested Zixin, now carrying off her notebook on his way to make himself some coffee. “With this week off, you’ll be getting antsy by Wednesday with no papers to grade. May as well do something fun with it, right?”

“You know, I don’t think I asked,” she mused. Grabbing her phone again, she gave Farzenah the slightly bad news that they wouldn’t have an easy fix before asking where they were. “Probably local, I didn’t hear anything from Henry about a big trip.” 

A response came quickly enough, confirming that they were only a state away. Caroline hummed and hawed over it internally for a moment, before setting her phone aside. “I’ll go down if they find anything else,” she told Zixin. “I don’t want to bother them if that’s all they end up seeing, you know?”

“Understandable,” he said, finally returning with his own cup of coffee. It was as it usually was, piping hot with just a splash of cream, enough to turn it a medium and not quite opaque brown color. “Do you mind if I make some of my own notes? I’m no linguist like you, but I know some languages you don’t.”

She nodded, happy that he was curious enough to take more than just a brief glance. “Please do,” she said, getting her laptop in order to read some new journal articles that had looked interesting and to check her email (every once in a while, one of her students would send her something interesting to take a look at as well). Settling into her chair, a pleasant silence overtook the room as the couple settled in for a nice afternoon of reading and note-taking together.  


* * *

The light of the sun was as blinding on the surface as she had remembered it, and even Hollow seemed uncomfortable with its brilliance. Her metaphorical shadow seemed to have taken to hiding in her literal one, stretched across the rock and more clearly outlined than it was in even Hallownest’s brightest places. With a huff in the direction of the light, Hornet motioned her sibling forward, and they soon ended up in the shade of a boulder. From here, Hornet could see some of the strange but recognizable sights of the surface – from the incomprehensibly massive towers of wood and plants known as ‘trees’, to the open ceilingless space above them nearly as blue as Lifeblood. It was beautiful, in its own alien way. Hornet would never want to live here, however.

The tremors started quickly once they arrived, but Hornet was patient and lay in wait. Soon, the light was overtaken by a huge shadow cast over them both, and the temperature plummeted. Looking briefly over at Hollow, it seems that they had... relaxed, with the darkness over them. Hornet wouldn’t have noticed that they were tense beforehand if not for noticing the near imperceptible change in their stature. 

Then, voices began, far away but incredibly loud. Hornet winced at first, then tried to focus on the source. The gargantuan beings that had neared her position weren’t as large as the trees, but – looking quickly as their anatomy – Hornet didn’t think she would come up past their foot, and even Hollow would only scrape the beginning of their strange looking legs. Cautiously creeping around to get a better look, it wasn’t hard to figure out that it was their repeated movement that was causing the tremors. Each time one of their feet fell upon the ground, it kicked up massive clouds of dust. Hornet didn’t dare get any closer than she already was. If she was caught underfoot – !

She shuddered at the thought. No, she was fine where she was. How could she even combat such things? There was no clear way to remove the threat to her kingdom – this wouldn’t be like the other challenges she had faced in the past. Could there be a way to lure them away?

Could she communicate with them? Her long time spent with only the infected for company had left Hornet with a stunted diplomatic instinct, and she didn’t relish the thought of attempting to talk to something so utterly alien. Surely, they would not share a common language either. Would they even be able to hear her? Not to mention, there was no clue that they wouldn’t prove hostile, at which point she would surely perish if their ire turned towards her.

As she crouched behind her rock, she saw one of the titans assemble some sort of machine, similar to the Wingmoulds, only larger – small enough to fit into one of Hallownest’s larger tunnels though. Spiralling into the air, it maneuvered shakily before hovering closer to her position. Tensing, Hornet readied her needle in case it strayed too close. 

In the end, it did. It zoomed past her, the gust it created nearly knocking her over before it pivoted in the air. The front of its body seemed to point towards her, and she prepared herself. A shiny black part of it seemed to be its eye from what she could tell – looking over at the two titans quickly, they seem to be looking at… Hornet wasn’t sure. Perhaps some sort of way to control it? Could they see through its eye? As far as she knew, the Pale King had never created any machine so advanced, although the Kingmoulds were certainly nimble when they had to be. 

It was time to decide what to do. Feeling awkward about talking to the little Wingmould-like object and on the brink of a momentous encounter, Hornet found her voice freezing as she tried to speak. Shaking off her momentary and uncharacteristic nerves, she tried again. “I know that you may not be able to understand me, but I am–” 

Then, it twitched towards her in its jerky manner, and years of combat overrode her current inclinations to try diplomacy. Her needle moved forwards before her mind did, and embedded itself deep through the machine’s eye like area and into its core. It was only when she pulled it back, following the initial motion through, that she realized what she had done.

Hornet did all she could, and sprinted back to where Hollow had stood and watched over the whole thing (had they moved closer when she had attacked? She thought she had seen some movement out of the corner of her eye. How – sweet, she decided upon). “Let’s go back down before they come over,” she urged, and they turned to follow her again and she made for the safer tunnels. Cursing her quick reactions for once in her life, Hornet returned to the darkness, already thinking of the possible ramifications of such an impulsive move.

* * *  


Two scientists stared at the error message they had just received on Farzenah’s phone, not saying a word to each other for a good minute. The drone Farzenah had set up lay destroyed in the corner of the boulders, its camera caved in by – something.

“What the hell was that,” Henry croaked out at last, hoping that his counterpart would at least have some sort of clue. There had been – something similar to what they’d been studying thus far, and they’d moved in to get a close look. Then, a flash of metal and red – cloth, maybe? – before the screen went dark.

_Tools,_ he thought. _They have tools._ Soon, it would register with his mind how insane that sounded. 

“I,” Farzenah said, clearly almost at a loss for words. “I have absolutely no clue.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're here :) (Well. Sort of) 
> 
> Comments/kudoses are appreciated as always!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our scientists change how they've been viewing this strange site, and Henry has a strange dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took a while! I was wrapping up a Hollow Knight playthrough that was ironically distracting me from this fic. Beat the Radiance this morning, then finished this chapter to post it lol. Hope you enjoy! 
> 
> **EDIT**: We got to 100 kudoses!! Thank you so much everyone :D

They tackled this new problem like they did with any other one that would naturally pop up during the course of their research: in front of a whiteboard that Farzenah deemed necessary to bring on all such expeditions. Armed with markers and a natural curiosity despite the distressing circumstances, Henry and Farzenah sat in front of it and silently dared their counterpart to talk first. 

It was Henry who broke the silence. “So, here’s what we know,” he started, and with a thick blue marker he wrote out on the whiteboard the word ‘Facts’ and underlined it fiercely. There was another pause as he wrote out two bullet points.

‘They look like bugs.’

‘They have metal tools (needle).’

They stared at the start of their board and tried to will the points to start connecting. Once again, it was Henry who spoke first.

“Maybe we’re tackling this the wrong way,” he suggested. “We’re entomologists. We – we study bugs, that’s our job. If we look at them like they’re bugs, we’re going to be limited in our train of thought. So – let’s do another field. Like anthropology, or archaeology, something more focused on sentient beings – I mean, that was clearly a tool, specifically made for its wielder. I can’t imagine they aren’t sentient from that alone. What could be some explanations for our observations from that perspective?”

Farzenah thought over the prompt for a moment before responding. “The piles of carapaces,” she said at last. “Do you remember that? All the bodies were piled up. Maybe that’s where they put their dead, like a mass grave. All of them seemed infected too – some sort of way to prevent the spread of disease?” She turned to make a new category, titled ‘Speculation’ before scribbling that thought in sprawling cursive underneath it.

“The tunnels are uniform,” Henry said. “I was initially assuming it was one species that had burrowed them, but maybe it’s – I don’t know – some sort of regulation. Of course, maybe they have burrowing capabilities, and they use that? I’m not putting that up yet, just – it’s a thought.”

“It’s a good one,” she encouraged. “I wonder how aware of us they are. The one we saw attacked our drone, but maybe it – they? – saw that as a threat? I don’t know how they would comprehend the size difference between us and them, if they would see us as similar beings in some way. 

“Those tablets, too. That’s probably their writing. I’m less certain about the statue, because it was above ground and on a larger scale for them, but I’d be willing to acknowledge the possibility.” 

Nodding along with all of Farzenah’s points, Henry then paused in his agreement when she mentioned the statue. “Really? I think it’s almost certainly their work. Yes, it looks relatively aged, and it’s larger than many of the other artifacts we’ve found so far, but I think it’s the most logical conclusion. It appears to be… almost moth-like? It would sort of make sense that it was built above ground, towards the light, in that case – I don’t know, maybe that’s a stretch.”

“It’d be interesting,” Farzenah said in a tone that surely meant she had not been fully convinced. “I’ll put that up as – hmmm, maybe a ‘Contentious Point’.”

“Lengthy but functional,” said Henry, watching as she wrote down the new category in red. 

“What does that leave to go over? My gut reaction is that we need more research, because we have this new angle.”

“Caroline’s husband is an anthropologist,” Henry added. “We could maybe call them down, since we’ve already gotten her involved. Having another set of eyes and some different sorts of experts would probably be helpful.”

“...Yes, that’s probably a good idea,” Farzenah said, already reaching for her cell phone. “Hmm. Right, no service – are you up for a walk in the woods with me?”

They set out for civilization together, chatting as they went – mostly about their new discovery. With the initial shock out of the way (Henry rather thought it would come back to them both at some later point) the pair reverted to excitement about something new and interesting to study, even if it was far outside of their normal scope. 

“I wonder how close their society would be to ours,” he mused aloud. “Is it completely alien, or recognizably similar in some fashion? Is this the only such colony that exists, or are there others scattered – and if so, is that locally or globally?”

“One sentient bug settlement at a time, Schmidt,” Farzenah teased, the odd levity created by the aftermath of surprise making her more casual than was normal for her. “But no – that is an interesting question. I for one am wondering what their language is like.”

“Well, you have the right phone number for that question.”

Together, they reached the outpost that Farzenah had gone to last time, sitting on the very same bench. She called Caroline quickly from there, waiting for the phone call to go through patiently.

Henry could only hear half of their conversation, but smiled despite everything when he heard Farzenah’s voice, which sounded strange while she was on the phone. Surprisingly, it never gained the false quality that many peoples’ did, but only became slightly higher and nervous. He’d become somewhat familiar with it over these several days together, especially in the last day since their incredible (and incredibly stressful) discovery, where both of them had been… rather high-strung, to say the least. 

Resisting the urge to shake his head, he couldn’t help but think this made sense. Only Farzenah would be as nervous as talking to people she didn’t know very well as she was about confronting the fact that humans might not only be the only beings to have civilization on their planet.

Now that he was thinking about that again, he was going to need to take some deep breaths and focus on something else for a bit. It was just too much to think about, hence the whiteboard that allowed them to break apart their thoughts in a way they were more familiar with. As Farzenah’s voice became more relaxed in the background, the distinct words of their conversation not too clear to his ears, Henry brought up that image of that board again in his mind. He wasn’t sure what it said about them: namely, whether they were even going about this the right way.

“Schmidt? Henry? Caroline said that she and Zixin would head down here pretty soon. I didn’t want to spring anything this big on them over the phone,” she said, awkwardly giving his shoulder a nudge. “At the very least, if we sound crazy, it’s harder to drive away and leave us to wallow in our confusion than it is to just hang up on me.”

“Caroline wouldn’t do that,” he reassured her. “She’d be too curious.”

At that Farzenah laughed, and he found himself enjoying the rich sound. “Well, I can relate. I should be running away from this whole mess by now, but… damnit Henry, for all that this is confusing and distressing and a whole host of other things, I’m curious too. I want to know more, I don’t think I could stop thinking about it even if I tried.”

“I’m in the same boat,” he said. “And you know what? Maybe we aren’t the right people for this, but we can make ourselves those people.”

Another laugh. “Keep on working on your inspirational speeches, Henry. But I think I get what you mean.”

With a new lightness and hope in their hearts, the two walked back through the woods. Dusk settled in as they neared their site, and by the time they got back only a few rays of sunlight continued to stretch their way over the horizon. “See you tomorrow, Schmidt,” Farzenah told him, heading for her own tent.

Henry waved her goodbye for the night, going to curl up in his own sleeping bag. After such an intense day that seemed like it had lasted an entire week, he was very happy to be able to just not think for a while.

What he didn’t notice – a tiny creature, only the white of their helm visible in the dark, creeping through a small tear in the fabric of his tent. In their hand, a fine engraved nail. Rearing it back as they reached his head, it glowed a brilliant violet before it swung towards him, and the little ghost collapsed by his side as it entered into his dreams.

* * *  


They woke in another’s dream like they had so many times before, and quickly glanced around the mindscape to see what they would be dealing with. Nothing they saw made much sense, but then again very little had throughout most of their journey through Hallownest. This wasn’t too different, then.

Hopefully it wouldn’t be the case that they would have to do battle with a dream version of the titan. They’d come with a good deal of combat-orientated charms just in case. Not that they were sure if fighting such a huge being would even be an option should it come to that, but surely they could try… ?

They came into a large chamber that was vibrantly decorated, and they started to look about for any hint of the colossal being. To their surprise, it seemed like the dream might have changed their size in relation to each other. They saw him sitting at the table, looking rather confused. (They had become rather good at reading facial expressions, much to their… pride? They still weren’t too good with understanding their own feelings...) Where normally they would come up to his heel, they now seemed to come up to almost his knee. Which was good – that let them jump up onto the chair across from him and scamper onto the table to sit.

He reacted immediately to their sudden presence. “ _What…?_ ” he asked aloud, and his chair scraped against the floor as he saw their black, empty eyes staring at him. Fortunately, his senses seemed to come back to him quickly. “ _Oh! It’s you – the little creature we saw that first day! But – this is a dream, then? I’ve never had a lucid dream before…_ ” His speech was clearly not in the Hallowscript that they’d become familiar with, but in this dream realm they found that they could understand his words through some mechanism that the Moth Tribe had once used. 

Equally quickly, they began to realize they were out of their depths. Unlike their sister, they did not have the power of speech and hence had no eloquence to wield. They’d come here because they’d seen their siblings encounter with the strange metal creature (they’d felt an urge – an urge, how bizarre, but becoming more familiar to them – to pogo on its head like they’d done with the Wingmoulds) and had wanted to help, but now they didn’t really know how.

Ah! They could draw! They’d done so to fill in their maps after all, and had loved refining Cornifer’s little doodles when they travelled through each area. They still had trouble with writing, despite their ability to read – and they were unsure whether or not that was because of their sire’s devotion to destroying their ability to communicate or not, but in any case, writing was off the table. But drawing was a different matter entirely. 

The paper that he had on this table was strange and thin, with little letters already written all over it. Very little letters, wow. But very well drawn pictures! In any case, they jumped off the table to look for some ink, or a quill. 

The titan – maybe he would need another descriptor, in this dream world, because he wasn’t that big here – watched them for a bit as they looked over his shelves. It was so different from the rooms that they’d seen in the City of Tears, or in Dirtmouth. Everything looked so new! Was this closer to what Hallownest had originally looked like? But no quills, none to be seen.

“ _What are you looking for?_ ” they finally heard, and turned towards the source of the sound. “ _Hmmm… you were looking at the newspaper earlier. I guess it would be strange, compared to your own writing._ ” Then, he shook his head. “ _Alright, this is odd, even for a dream. I’ve really gotten myself in deep with this if I’m having such a detailed one._ ”

They got an idea, and walked back over to the ‘newspaper’, tapping the black text several times and then circling their little tendril as if to make a drawing motion. Before remembering their past, and even before their rebirth, they hadn’t bothered much with pantomime. It had not come naturally to them (yet another block on their personhood, or just an unfortunate coincidence?) but after a bit of practice they’d figured out how to get across some rudimentary ideas. 

“ _You want… to write? Oh, that makes sense. Can you not speak? Uh – nevermind. I’m taking this way too seriously… ah, here’s a pen that works. And some blank paper. There you go._ ”

They took the odd tools (the paper was so white, the pen – quill? – so unwieldy with its size in their grasp. Still, after figuring out how it worked, they carefully drew out a rough contour of their sister’s face. Her twin horns appeared wobbly, so to make it more clearly they tried to put in her fluttery dress as well. 

“ _Oh, that’s the one we saw today! My, you’re quite the little artist._ ”

Never sure how about how praise affected them (they’d received it before, albeit sparsely, throughout their time in Hallownest), they continued dutifully with drawing out the Hollow Knight. Their massive horns took center stage in the image, and after a moment’s hesitation they colored in their eyes the void-black that their own were. After all, the infection was purged from the Hollow Knight as well, as they had seen when spying on their two siblings from afar. 

Finally, a little drawing of themself. This was the most challenging to complete, because they’d never seen a reason to stare at themself in a reflective surface. Nor was their mind meant to handle the concept of a ‘self’, they supposed. Still, they managed well enough. They had seen ‘themself’ before, after all – when Nosk had taken on their form to lure them into a trap. 

How to convey the information they needed to get across? Hmmm, maybe – they drew the Pale King, his empty eyes just as they remembered staring into nothing. Then the White Lady to his side, and they quickly found that the glittering effect of her eyes was rendered unremarkable. Making a large circle around the pair, they drew lines from the shape to themself and Hollow. 

Next came Herrah, her horns the same shape as Hornets. The six eyes were drawn on roughly, blocky shapes that only mostly read as eyes, before circling her and the Pale King. A line was then drawn from that circle to Hornet, and they displayed their diagram to the other person in the room.

Gently taking it from their stumpy hands, he examined it closely. “ _I don’t know if I… oh, I think I see now. You and this other being are siblings–_ ” He pointed at themself and Hollow here, and they bowed their head in agreement. “ _–and that these are your parents? Ah, and you’re saying that you and the one from yesterday are half-siblings, interesting…_ ”

He trailed off, looking everything over again. “ _I don’t know how my head came up with this, I have to be honest,_ ” he said finally. They resisted the urge to slap their hands on the table in frustration (where had that even come from? Now they wanted to do it, just to see what it would be like). This wouldn’t be any help he wrote it all off as an ordinary dream! Or maybe it would? Maybe it could at least get him thinking in the right way. For some reason, they had the sense that it was important that he and his companion remembered Hornet. Probably because she was Queen of Deepnest now, and with Hallownest lacking a ruler, she was the most powerful political force around.

That wasn’t right though. Hallownest did have a ruler, they realized as they looked down at themself. Did they want to go back? They certainly wanted to see Hornet and the Hollow Knight again. It was strange, being able to pursue whatever path they liked. 

Hallownest did seem to be that path. They thought back upon its twisting caverns, well-traveled by them and only them. The serenity of Dirtmouth, the beauty of Greenpath, the horror of the Abyss, even the pain of Kingdom’s Edge from the Primal Aspids and the Colosseum… and the pride there too, the surprise of Hornet saving their life. The majesty and wonder of the City of Tears...

Their vision began to fade to white, like it did at the end of every dream – but why? What conclusion had been reached? The other being was still looking down at the paper, his skin creased around his eyes as he squinted at it. Had they missed something? This was new to them after all, not fighting someone within the dream.

 _I should tell Farzenah about this_ , echoed through their mind, but that wasn’t the major thought. Instead, they were only left with their own thoughts.

 _Hallownest_ remained in their head. It was their own thoughts then, their own internal conclusion. They had felt the urge to laugh before – not that they could – only a few times, and never at something like this. Why did that urge exist?

They woke suddenly, lying on the ground like they had so many times before. It seemed that their time as an aimless wanderer had ended – they had someplace to return to, now.

As they looked back at the still sleeping figure of the titan, they wondered when the next time they would meet would be. Somehow, they were looking forward to it. It felt like another set of secrets and mysteries, like the sort that had surrounded the fall of Hallownest and the gods behind it. Hopefully, this would be one with lower stakes.

With that, the little ghost slipped out through the same flap they had come in through, and ran off into the night towards their kingdom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully everything made sense/read well. Please let me know in the comments if something was confusing! As always, thanks for reading, and see you next time!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry meets the third member of the trio from his dreams, Hollow's doing GREAT thanks for asking, and we finally get a family reunion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Some warnings this chapter for some relatively standard self-worth issues on Hollow's part. To avoid the worst of that section, skip over the paragraph after "Their Queen-sister had always seemed to like it." and pick back up at "It was in this moment of self depreciation that their sibling perked up". Hope you enjoyed!

Hornet had temporarily made her retreat back to the Hollowing Cliffs, Hollow following closely behind her (she was starting to suspect that it almost went without saying at this point). Rattled by even her brief if disastrous contact with the titan’s strange machine, she did what she would normally do during her time as Hallownest’s protector – temporarily retreat and hide someplace safer, identifying what she needed to do next time. Any seasoned explorer would do the same – but she wasn’t just that anymore, was she?

It had been nearly a full light-dark cycle, which Hornet knew was where the term ‘day’ originated from in the first place, but still seemed alien to her. Below the surface, changes in light levels were never so regular, only the dimming of Lumaflies, the fading of bioluminescence, or until recently the bursts of the Radiance’s Infection allowing darkness to take hold over an area again. It was the cyclical nature, then, that seemed so odd to her.

But that was enough musing on the light (yet another thing that she had learned was dangerous, having grown up and come of age in the time of the Infection). Hornet turned to Hollow, having grown accustomed to telling her sibling where they were headed next.

Or rather, she turned to where Hollow was, just a few seconds ago. Or had it been minutes? How long had she been thinking for – rather, how far away from her could they be now?

Ignoring her worst fears – what could even exist now within Hallownest’s ruins that would pose a threat to them, soundlessly at that? It was ridiculous to imagine such a thing – Hornet set to work immediately, finding where the subtle scrape of the feet against the ground began. She was lucky that her sibling left tracks at all, their odd void-made form not always obeying the laws that other bugs’ bodies would. 

From their starting point against the rock, their footsteps travelled back the way they had come – for a moment she thought these might be old tracks from their first trip up to the surface, but these were clearly very new – heading towards where they had just been. Hornet managed to resist the urge to swear, although it was incredibly tempting and there was no one around to hear it. This was probably the worst way for Hollow to develop their independence, and while in any other circumstance she would be somewhat relieved that they’d finally done something other than whatever she’d last asked them to do, she found herself wishing that they could have just stayed put.

And immediately scolded herself for that, because that was hardly fair. Just because she didn’t like the way they’d chosen to exercise their sudden freedom didn’t mean they shouldn’t have it. And in a way, it was good to have her fear that Hollow was always going to be limited in the ‘free will’ department put to rest.

Still, did they have to go back to the titans? If there was anything that could defeat them that yet lived, that would be it. Hornet followed the tracks, running a quick pace up towards the surface again. Apparently, her respite wasn’t going to be as long as she would have liked.

* * *

Henry woke from his strange dream with a pounding headache and a very clear memory of all that had happened within it. “Huh,” he said to no one in particular, just letting the syllable make itself known. 

Then he stood up and got himself ready for the day. He still had no clue what that dream had been on about – probably just his brain trying to make connections where there weren’t any. Still, it was sort of funny to think that the creature they’d seen on the first day would be related to the red dressed bug (they really needed a name for it – them? – Henry realized). He supposed they looked a little alike, if only in basic body shape and build.

Heading out of his tent, he found that it was still relatively early in the morning, and he paused to look at the rosy sunrise that was still visible on the horizon. Knowing that Farzenah wouldn’t be up for another hour or so, he decided to head down to the site and get a bit of an early start on the day. She’d know to join him down there once she did wake up. 

He had always been careful walking down there, watching underfoot to make sure that no little bugs found their way under his shoe, but now he was especially careful. Even with a relatively good night’s sleep, he didn’t know how he was supposed to feel about the whole situation, and pretty quickly settled on not feeling much at all and focused on learning before he made any snap judgements.

They’d been lucky with the weather, he thought, abruptly changing his train of thought before he could spiral into confusion. It had been pleasant days with barely a hint of rain, and even now the chill of morning felt bearable. Dew was scattered across the forest floor, but the wet feeling in his shoes didn’t bother him much after years of field work experience. 

Finally reaching that section of rocky bluffs where they’d done most of their work, he moved carefully to where they’d been yesterday, figuring he’d check for any new signs of life – or maybe he’d just look down the tunnel that their mystery figure had run down the other day. When he did get a good look, he groaned. Had they really just left the drone lying there? He supposed they’d had other things on their mind, but still – sloppy work on their part. 

Before he could go over and get it, however, he saw something move from behind it and froze immediately, like that would stop whatever it was from noticing him. Or maybe it would – he still knew nothing about how these beings’ senses worked. 

When he saw them however, he was frozen for an entirely different reason. They seemed completely different from any of the others he and Farzenah had seen thus far, taller and with a pair of large horns that appeared almost jagged in places. But not completely unfamiliar to Henry – no, this was one of the drawings from his dream come to life! The little crack into their face was even in the right place, running down in a harsh line to their left eye. 

They watched each other for a moment, before the creature that wouldn’t even hit mid-calf on him decided that the best course of action was to pull a weapon on him and bristle in his general direction. To their credit, the long blade that they had drawn was probably the size of his finger, and he didn’t really want to get stabbed by it.

Henry did the only thing he could think to do at that moment. He pulled out his phone and quickly snapped a picture, before putting it away before holding his hands up in what he hoped was a universal sign of surrender. In the back of his mind, he realized the absurdity of the situation – something that he could probably step on had essentially pulled a knife on him and he felt like he was shaking out of fear over it, but it wasn’t everyday that something like this happened to Henry. Hell, he couldn’t remember if a _human_ had ever threatened to stab him in earnest.

“Sorry for bothering you,” he said, even knowing that they wouldn’t be able to understand him. “I can. I can leave. Leave?” He pointed behind him vaguely. 

They did nothing, their arms not even shaking as they continued to point a sharp metal object at him. Deciding that if he did get stabbed at least he’d be the first person ever stabbed by this species, Henry started to slowly move closer.

His new ‘friend’ didn’t seem to like that too much, shifting their position slightly so that their weapon was always at an advantageous position to shiv him if he… got too close? Made any sudden movements? Henry suddenly realized that he had no clue what would set them off. Maybe… they had been standing by the drone. Was it something to do with that?

He pointed at the wreck. “Is it something to do with that?” he asked desperately. To his surprise, they moved away from it, pointing at it once with their weapon before its point seemed to aim somewhere around his eye again. 

Looks like they wanted it gone. Going off of the other one’s reaction to it yesterday, Henry supposed this reinforced the idea that they might have viewed it as some sort of threat. Moving at a snail’s pace now, he carefully picked up the wreck, trying not to let his fingers shake when he came within easy stabbing distance. “It’s gone now,” he reassured, and watched as they backed up further and let their weapon drop to a less obviously threatening position. They could still probably use that thing with deadly force though, especially against creatures their own size. Henry was starting to wonder what sort of society these guys lived in, if threatening was the first way they had tried communicating with. 

Fortunately, with their slightly less aggressive stance, it did seem like Henry and successfully navigated this bizarre encounter. He backed away slowly, and while their head slowly rotated so that their pitch black eyes could continue to watch him, they stayed in their current position without so much as a twitch towards him. Once he felt confident that there was no way they could possibly throw their weapon at him once he turned his back (not that he thought that was _likely_ , but he didn’t feel like risking it either), Henry turned to quickly walk back to his camp. Aside from that exciting encounter, he didn’t think he was going to be getting any work done early today. 

* * *

Hollow watched the being that their Queen had begun to call one of ‘the titans’ retreat, standing completely still on the top of the cliffs that overlooked the great gorge that the titans seemed most active in. Its massive size had made it an intimidating potential foe at first, far greater than any they would have faced before (save one – but even She was not as physically large as it had been), but it appeared that despite that clear advantage it was quite cowardly. At least, they had managed to accomplish their goal – getting rid of the ruin of that machine from the day before. 

They had tried to move it themself, but although they managed to get it to creak and whine, even budge slightly and further fracture as they whacked at it with their nail, it provided a mostly fruitless endeavor to try and get it off the cliff, where it could do no further harm. Living in the time of the Infection had taught the Hollow Knight that nothing was safe – not even corpses. The Kingsmoulds they had once trained with had never seemed to fall to the Infection, true – but they had. How much separated them from the Kingsmould, the Kingsmould from the titan’s machine? Even with the Radiance supposedly gone, they knew that it was better to leave to danger remaining so close to their Queen.

Their sister, rather. But the Queen part seemed more important, most of the time. 

And they did not trust for a second that the Radiance was truly gone, not forever. Yes, they remembered their shade and that of their sibling rending Her apart, Her shattered form dragged into the void along with the other shades of their siblings. But She had existed before and after Hallownest, the Kingdom Eternal, that still lingered in the ruins. Death need not be forever.

Hollow would be here for Her, if She did return. 

They were snapped out of their thoughts by a sound from their right, and they quickly turned towards it. It was not the sound of footsteps – and hence definitely not the skittering gait of their Queen-sister’s. Rather, it sounded a bit like the rush of wind. Did it sound familiar? They thought it did…

Their better judgment failed to prevail against their new and now-unrestrained sense of curiosity. Hollow hadn’t even noticed its development, and hence could not stifle it like they had with other, more intense feelings. Curiosity, under the right circumstances, might just look an awful lot like ‘vigilance’. Hence, they walked towards the sound cautiously, their nail still in their grip. 

The sound grew louder, and they looked into the darkness of the tunnel now ahead of them. From within its depths – was that some sort of violet light…?

A burst of color and crystalline shards overtook them without warning, giving them no time to even swing their nail. They were knocked flat on their back, weapon clattering a few times against the ground, and a much smaller thunk of a small form hitting the ground rang out just a moment afterwards. Scrambling back to their feet to grab their weapon, they had just enough to stifle the instinct to attack when they saw who else lay on the ground.

Their sibling, the true slayer of the Radiance, stood ungracefully and a bit dizzily from the force of the impact. The pair stared at each other for a moment. 

The smaller of the two reached up in an attempt to pat Hollow’s cracked mask. They couldn’t quite reach, so Hollow awkwardly bent down so they could do so, before remembering that this was the bearer of the King’s Brand and properly bowing instead.

It was impossible to remember which one of them was actually older. Hollow remembered briefly seeing the little vessel with pronged horns beginning their own climb when they had started to ascend, but they had been similar in the fact that both of them had felt the instinctual urge to go _higher_ from the moment of their birth. But they were so much taller than the vessel that their Queen-sister would sometimes call ‘the little ghost’, and Hollow decided that they would hence have to be the big sibling. 

The little one continued to pet their horns in what was probably meant to be a soothing manner, or maybe they just liked tactile sensations. Either way, Hollow was fine with it.

This was their first time meeting that hadn’t been a life or death situation. It was somewhat refreshing, if incredibly confused. Had either of them ever been able to truly interact with another vessel? The silence felt natural because of their shared state, with no awkward pauses as one of them released the other couldn’t respond. Hollow chittered at them, a vaguely affectionate noise and one of them only ones they could make. Their Queen-sister had always seemed to like it.

No sound was returned, although they seemed to like it. Maybe this little one was as voiceless as their father had intended. Considering that they had been the one to actually defeat the Radiance, their father had clearly misjudged when he let them fall. Hollow should have been the one pushed to the Abyss below, not them.

It was in this moment of self depreciation that their sibling perked up, looking around them towards the tunnel behind them that Hollow had come from. There was no violent burst of crystals this time, only the irate face of their Queen-sister emerging from the dark.

Any hint of annoyance at them (it was surely at Hollow, who had left without warning, and was fully deserved) faded away when she saw her other sibling. “You!” she cried out, picking up her pace to reach the pair. “How are you alive? How are you _here_?”

The other vessel cocked their head to the side, and Hollow awkwardly stepped back so that their two regents and siblings could reunite. Hornet was stuck for a moment after catching up to where the rest of them were, unable to know what to do in this situation. Briefly, Hollow remembered witnessing a reunion between parent and child once at a stag station, how they had wrapped their arms around one another in a gesture of comfort. It didn’t seem right to them, but for a moment they pictured the scene in their head, only with their siblings instead.

That obviously did not take place. Instead, there was only Hornet’s oddly quiet voice. “It’s good to have you back, little ghost.”

They patted her mask like they had done with Hollow’s, and that was enough comfort for them. 

* * *

Overall, their reunion with their siblings had gone relatively well, considering that no one had been stabbed shortly after it. If they could, they’d have laughed at their own joke. As things were, they felt their form of void flicker a few times around the edges, something that they’d learned was their own form of laughter during their travels (it happened most frequently around Zote, and they’d been stuck for a while on whether it was that or ‘frustration’.)

There was so much to be done, between the kingdom of Hallownest to that man they had met in his own dreams. But for now, they were happy to just enjoy the fact that all of their (remaining) siblings were here with them, and relatively at peace.

‘Little ghost’ – their sister had called them that many times, and they liked the way she said it. It wasn’t quite the same as other names they’d heard along the way, but it felt right to them.

Ghost stared out across the gorge. Yes, there was much to be done, but even under the most dire circumstances they had always been able to find the joy of a beautiful view with good company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading everyone! As always, please comment if you have the time/inspiration/energy, I really appreciate them. Also FINALLY Ghost has their name that took FOREVER lol. 
> 
> Bonus:  
> Hollow: *rolls nat 20 on their Intimidate*  
> Henry: nope noPE NOPE–


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry finally freaks out, and diplomacy is attempted on both sides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back everyone! Sorry for the long wait – I ran into our old friend writer's block for a bit, and I think we might be approaching some form of endgame within the next chapter or so. I have lots of ideas for this, but with NaNoWriMo coming up I think I'd feel better if this is wrapped up within the next few weeks – although there'd always be room for one shots after the fact! Anyways, I hope you enjoy!

Henry did his back to walk at a normal pace back to camp, but a combination of nervous energy and fear that there was a knife-wielding bug behind him eventually overtook him, and he found himself sprinting through the forested trail as he was overtaken by ancient instinctual fear. Wasn’t that supposed to be for creatures larger than himself? Apparently not.

Not daring to look back until he was well away from the boulders, he couldn’t help but wonder what this was what managed to spook him so much. In the moment, he thought he’d handled everything rather well – after all, he was good with bugs, and this was just naturally extrapolating outwards. It was only afterwards that he had started to panic.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? He was good with _bugs_ , not people. Neither he or Farzenah had that particular talent. 

Trying to clear his mind of that thought, he finally found himself back where he’d started that morning, just in time for Farzenah to emerge from her own tent and stare at him. When confusion with a dash of concern showed in her puzzled expression, he realized he must look rather disheveled from his impromptu morning jog. “I’ll… I’ll tell you in just a moment,” he said, and she nodded with no small degree of that lingering worry. 

Sitting down together in her tent, he began to explain what had happened, his voice slightly picking up in pitch and speed as he continued. Henry knew that he was rambling, but at least it seemed like Farzenah was following, her facial expression shifting along with the story as he spoke. “–It turned out they only wanted the drone gone,” he said, racing through the sentence. “So I moved it, and they seemed alright with that, and then I left, _very quickly_.”

Reasonably, Farzeneh didn’t seem to know what to say. “It sounds like you handled it well?” Then again, she likely wasn’t sure what the correct response to such a situation was. 

“Should we… go back and see if they’re still there?” she asked him cautiously. “I mean, they didn’t have two weapons.”

The logic was sound, although Henry thought that either one of them being stabbed would still be very, very unideal to say the least. “Probably,” he said, his nervousness finally beginning to fade now that he’d been able to share his strange morning with someone else. Sure, he still felt a bit jittery, but maybe that was just excitement at the possibility of learning something new. The adrenaline had hit him hard, that was all. “No, that’s a good idea. Should we do that now? Best chance of catching them again. Uh, not literally catching, just–”

“–I understood,” she soothed, standing up, and grabbing a bag from where it sat next to her sleeping bag. “Are you sure you’re up for this Henry? You seemed a little out of it.”

Rising as well, he sighed. “I was, honestly. Not in the moment, I was so focused on what was happening that I didn’t have time to be afraid. Afterwards though… it’s a little ridiculous, being afraid of something so much smaller than me.”

“Black widows are also smaller than you,” Farzenah retorted cheerfully.”

“Not very helpful, but true.”

“Black widow with a knife,” Farzenah said, her eyes gaining a rare gleam in them. Henry understood her intention. Her humor was rare, and usually served the purpose of making light of something that would otherwise be rather scary or painful – like that time one of her graduate students had been stung by a paper wasp. Laughing at the mental image she’d constructed for him, they walked out together, determined to head back down to their site and face that strange creature once again. 

* * *

Upon returning the rocks, they saw not one awaiting figure but three. One of them was already familiar to both of them, the destroyer of Farzenah’s droid by the side of the tall, armed creature that Henry had seen just an hour or so before. The final one was also familiar, although more distantly for Farzenah, and she gasped at the sight of them.

“Is that – the one that we saw in our first days here – !” 

Henry also couldn’t help but gape, remembering his dream. It had slipped his mind in all the excitement – not that he would have given a dream he had as evidence to Farzenah. But still, seeing these three together in particular reminded him of that. But surely, it couldn’t have been true, unless it was by coincidence. Henry knew of no way to affect another being’s dreams after all.

(But why had he recognized the tall one then? Had he somehow caught a glimpse of them at some point, and inserted them into his dream? He must have. He must have.)

By the time he’d processed all that, the three figures had turned towards them, watching the two scientists warily with their pitch black eyes. Again, Henry was reminded of that rudimentary family tree that had appeared in his dream – the red clothed one (and it did seem to be clothing, now that Henry could see her more clearly) had the same eye shape as the tall one. 

But it was the littlest of them all that moved first, nimbly and fearlessly jumping from the top of the rocks to the ground below. Once again, they both saw the flash of brilliant white wings, almost glowing in their brilliance – now, Henry noticed the details of this motion, seeing how they seemed to almost disappear into their back after that single flap. The part of him that still wanted to think about these people through a more biological lens reared its head to ask how they could possibly be doing that, but Henry had no answer for it.

They stared up at the two humans, their cartoonishly large eyes unblinking. It was completely impossible to get a read on anything that they were thinking – although, Henry had hope for communication. Despite the harrowing nature of the experience, his morning had indirectly revealed the important fact that there was a language they shared – certainly, the tall one had been able to clearly threaten him. 

Farzenah had chosen to kneel down to get closer to the littlest one, who Henry only now noted had a weapon just like their companions. He wouldn’t say ‘siblings’ until he had more evidence that wasn’t just a dream. “Hey there,” she said, her voice full of wonder. It was the first friendly encounter she had had with one of them.

In response, they reached into their – wait, cloak? Henry could have sworn that was a part of them – and pulled out a tablet of stone, smaller than the ones they had seen before. Farzenah accepted it graciously and with clear reverence for the strangeness of the moment, before perking her head up and reaching into the bag she’d brought with her. “I know you can’t understand, but – thank you. I have something to return to you all.”

Placing the lore tablets that they had retrieved in their initial excavations down on the ground, they both watched as the little figure – these guys really needed names, rather than just adjectives, Henry thought – examined it closely. To both their surprise, a soft glow of light began to shine from within the rock, and for a moment he swore he heard the faintest of murmurs originating from the same place.

Both of them looked at each other. This was entirely new.

They’d been somewhat prepared for this new civilization to have technology similar to their own – based on the fact that Henry had a sharp blade pointed at him and not a tiny gun, he had been assumed that they hadn’t developed any sort of firearms. Probably not electricity either. But this… this seemed to point at something new. This civilization might not even follow what Henry had been – evidently falsely – presuming was the common advancement of technology. Internally, he scolded himself for that – no matter how hard he tried, he hadn’t managed to break through and view them as something completely new, neither human nor bug. 

The red clothed one had made their way down at this point as well, and he heard himself audibly gasp when a faint voice came from their chest. The language of course didn’t sound familiar, but Henry recognized the moment for what it was – they were probably the first humans to ever hear someone speak it! For a moment, all his worries faded away, and he was able to enjoy this stunning moment.

Then both sets of eyes were turned upon him again, and he remembered that he wasn’t just there to observe. He was there to make a connection.

Before he could try and do anything, however, the littlest one had fearlessly approached him, tapping on the base of his shoe insistently. Staring down at them, confused, he watched the first clear emotion he’d ever seen them have appear, as they sunk in disappointment. Jumping and running over to the center of the flat ground they were currently on (they certainly were energetic, Henry was starting to realize), they used the handle of their nail to etch something in the dirt.

He walked over to it, anticipation growing. When he saw what it was, he froze – there, in front of him, was the same set of drawings he’d seen last night in his dream.

“How… ?” he asked aloud, whirling his head around to face them. Not that they had any response, of course.”

“Henry? What is it?” Farzenah said, walking over to him. “What’s – oh! Wow, they drew that? Well, I guess they have art in some similar forms to ours. That’s good to know.”

“I had a dream like this,” he responded unprompted, causing her to look up. “They – this appeared, in my dream. I swear I haven’t seen it before.”

Farzenah seemed as shocked as he had for a moment, visibly recoiled after she processed what he was saying. After her (rather quick) recovery, she stared back down at it with renewed interest. “Honestly, after everything we’ve seen? Them having some way to affect people’s sleeping minds would not be the oddest thing.”

“We’ll need a little more evidence for a conclusion like that.”

“True,” she said with a sigh. “But wouldn’t that be interesting?”

* * *

Ghost enjoyed interacting with the titans like they enjoyed unravelling any new mystery. In all honesty, this was probably even one of the better ones – more slow paced than their usual fare, but less dangerous. There was a time when everything in Hallownest had seemed new. Even as they had gained that alien warmth for the kingdom’s spiralling tunnel system’s familiarity, it would always be the new that drew the most attention from them.

And they seemed nice. That was always a bonus. They were chatty in their own language, but clearly curious and trying to be respectful. Ghost had met enough rude people to know when they were being dismissed.

Hornet seemed less pleased with the whole situation, and said as much. “Are you sure it’s wise to be so close?” she’d openly asked them, even as she had made her own descent to get a closer look. Only Hollow stayed back now, observing the situation with their normal watchfulness. Ghost had no doubt that they would make a valiant attempt to defend them both if things somehow went wrong.

Not that Ghost was particularly worried. The titans were at a size beyond imagining, but docile, and Ghost was used to being small in a very big world. They could dash under one of those large feet easily enough, and Hornet had proved herself mobile enough to escape with ease. Keeping that in mind, they nodded, before turning their attention back to their looming observers.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t going to be any easy solutions with talking to them. They’d sigh if they could – they had been hoping that Hornet, gifted with voice, might provide a solution. Unless Ghost could dig up a titan-version of the Spore Shroom they might be out of luck with more complex communication.

Could there be something like that? Ghost resolved to go checking some nooks and crannies again to make sure that they’d not missed anything. 

The glaring light in the sky that had once caused them to startle, memories of the Radiance running through their mind, began to shift as their time went on. Ghost drew more pictures, including a detailed map of Hallownest from memory. They’d seen one of them – the one whose dream they’d entered – copy it down. At Hornet’s slight glare, they’d avoided mapping out Deepnest. Their sister’s kingdom’s security was her business, after all.

After they’d finally managed to carve into the dirt the final cavern of Kingdom’s Edge (once again, avoiding the Hive – not their kingdom, not their secret to reveal they supposed), they noticed that the light was fading. It seemed that the titans had noticed that as well, because one of them nudged the other. Their time together seemed to be at an end, at least for now.

One of them – the one with longer hair – dipped their head in what Ghost supposed was a universal acknowledgement. Bowing back (finally, something they could communicate efficiently!), both they and their sibling watched as the two walked away, stirring up dust as causing tremors as they left.

“That could have gone worse,” Hornet admitted.

Ghost thought that was an understatement, but had no way to share that thought. Instead, they just trotted off to rejoin their other sibling. They were looking forward to resting on a nice iron bench somewhere after all this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comments and kudos are greatly appreciated – thank you so much to everyone who does so!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very new to the Hollow Knight fandom, and I'm not sure what people are interested in. As such, I haven't drafted up an outline, but if people seem interested I'd be happy to continue this. Please let me know in the comments if you liked it! Also, I do welcome concrit on this, since I'm still figuring the characters and the world out. Thanks again!


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